articles on food, supplements and nutrition...

(NEW) Build muscle and stay lean. We often get asked by trainers with faster metabolisms “How can I build muscle while staying lean?” If you have a fast metabolism, you need to be choosing slower digesting foods to give your body the opportunity to get nutrients out of the food. More >>

Flax seed oil for more muscle. The dietary essential fatty acids common to Flax Seed Oil are converted by the body to Prostaglandin's (a hormone like substance) which are important for regulating many functions in your body including steroid production & hormone synthesis, joint function, blood vessels integrity, eye health, blood clotting ability, water retention, inflammation pain and nerve transmission. More >>

Why Hydrolysed Whey protein? Because it’s fast! Hydrolysed Whey Protein can flood your system with peptides and amino acids in ­a very short time to stimulate maximum protein synthesis. How? Well lets take a step back and explain what Hydrolysed Whey Protein is. More >>

8 top bodybuilding foods. Bodybuilding is a great sport if you enjoy eating! When you’re training to build muscle size and strength, you’ve got to eat quite a lot of food – good quality food. The better the quality, the greater your gains will be. So we thought we’d list 8 of the best muscle building foods you can eat. Include these foods regularly in your diet if you really want to pack on Mass. Now they’re in no particular order, they are all good! Here we go!. More >>

New developments in WPI. If you’ve been into training for some time, you’d probably already know that Whey Protein is regarded as THE premier protein for building muscle. ­But its probably only been in the last 10 years that whey has shot to prominence as the numero uno protein. Before then, this humble protein was poorly regarded as a waste product from cheese manufacturing and in many cases simply thrown away or used for animal feed – but not any more! More >>

Manufacture of Amino Acids. Currently, the amino acids used in amino acid products are mainly manufactured by the fermentation method using natural materials, similar to yogurt, beer, vinegar, miso (bean paste), soy sauce,etc. More >>

The benefits of fibre. Many of us may remember the heyday of bran during the late 1970s and early 1980s with massive promotion of bran cereals and granola. Next came the oat bran craze, with oat products in all shapes and sizes flooding the market claiming to lower blood cholesterol and fight heart disease. More >>

Dieting and your metabolism. When we're bombarded with images of gorgeous celebrities who seem to lose weight in the time it takes us to eat a Danish pastry, it's no wonder we're often tempted to cut our already low calorie intakes in an effort to shift an extra pound or two More >>

About the GI index. Not all carbohydrate foods are created equal, in fact they behave quite differently in our bodies. The glycemic index or GI describes this difference by ranking carbohydrates according to their effect on our blood glucose levels. More >>

Protein Basics. Your muscles, skin, hair, organs, blood, enzymes, and even your bones are made up mainly of protein - it is the structural base of your entire body. After water, protein is the largest component of the body, comprising approximately 15% by weight. More >>

Milk, Friend or Foe? For some years milk suffered a pretty bad wrap. Dairy fat is widely thought to have a negative affect on cholesterol and heart health, while others in our community suffer from lactose intolerance or in rarer cases, allergies to certain milk proteins. More >>

20 Diet Tips For Every Trainer. If you are seriously trying to add muscle, you have to train hard, heavy and eat plenty of quality protein. As a general rule of thumb, to gain mass you should eat 3 grams of protein per kg of bodyweight every day. More >>

Carbs For Building Muscle. For a hard training bodybuilder, a diet rich in complex carbs is recommended. Along with plenty of protein, try to focus on eating unprocessed complex carbohydrates like potatoes. More >>

Tips For Getting Lean. If you are a competitive bodybuilder, then you can resort to some of the usual tricks,like a low carb / low fat diet to quickly strip bodyfat, but this approach is difficult to sustain, and pretty unhealthy for any longer than about 2 - 3 weeks. More >>

Getting Ripped. Muscle definition, or being ripped, refers to having your muscles appear more visibly and dramatically. A guy with a twelve-inch arm can have much more noticeable muscles than a guy with an eighteen-inch arm because he has better definition. More >>

Five Food Myths Exposed. It was once thought that the key to weight loss was eliminating all high carbohydrate foods, including pasta, rice and potatoes. We now know that carbohydrates are the body's preferred energy source. More >>

Diet Cycling for Muscle Gains. As most of you know who train regularly, gaining muscle continuously is impossible. After initial early gains, adding mass is a constant battle – often thwarted by many setbacks. More >>

Cutting Up - The Low Carb Diet. In hindsight, if I review my competition diets from years gone by, I found that the times when I reduced carbohydrates dramatically really hardened me up, i.e. stripped body fat quickly. We were really onto something there. More >>

Recovery Nutrition. While it’s important to ensure you follow a balanced bodybuilding nutrition program, the time window just after a hard workout is the when your muscles are most receptive to the uptake of the high quality nutrients you need to recover and grow. More >>

Diet Cheat Days. Eight weeks into your 'diet', even though your abs are beginning to show, your energy levels are a lot lower then they used to be. Plus, your mind is starting to think about 'food'. Not chicken, sweet potatoes, or green beans, but of dipping a chocolate bar into a bowl of ice-cream!. More >>

Alcohol and your body. Alcohol, is one of the worlds oldest, most widely used drugs and has many detrimental, (and some positive), effects on the body. Historically speaking, alcohol has been blamed for many of the worlds tragedies and problems, and ironically, it is made from relatively innocuous substance. More >>

Meal Planning. Most bodybuilding magazines have regular articles on the training and diet programs of the bodybuilding elite. There also seem to be lots of article around on sample diets for gaining muscle, losing fat etc. The one thing I find when I read all of these articles is - they don’t suit me! More >>

Whey Protein Isolate - A Muscle Building Protein that is Truly Better. This all new Ion Exchange WPI is the most easily digested and absorbed naturally occurring protein yet developed- having a superior Biological Value to any other protein - greater than egg white, WPC, and all other milk proteins. More >>

MAX'S Intensity Zone Nutrition. Most of the food you eat is in the form of protein, carbohydrates and fats - the macro nutrients. To build muscle mass requires a diet high in quality protein, high in complex carbohydrates and relatively low in fat and simple sugars. More >>

High Protein Diets and your health. At one time or another, you've probably heard the myth that high protein diets are bad for your kidneys, they dehydrate you and give you osteoporosis. Well, here's the truth. More >>

articles on training, fitness, theory and injuries...

(NEW) Wrist-straps. Good or bad? Are wrist-straps good or bad for you? One side of the story is that they allow you to concentrate more on the muscle being worked and reinforcing your grip so that your forearms are not the limiting factor of your back-workouts . More >>

(NEW) Tips for Hard Gainers. Trainers with faster metabolisms are often referred to as 'Hard Gainers'.  You know the type, the thin, wirey and lanky guys who have to run around the shower to get wet. They can eat truckloads of food and never put on weight. Some people, including most women, would love to have this type of metabolism. More >>

Boost Testosterone Naturally. If there is one substance that could be considered the "holy grail" of muscle growth, testosterone would be it. Quite simply, testosterone is the most important muscle-building hormone in your body and is one of the limiting factors that determines how much muscle you can ultimately build. More >>

Training Partners. A good training partner can be a great asset to your training but if you get stuck with a bad one, it could lead you down the road to frustration. Be selective when choosing a training partner. Not every person is a good one (some can be downright horrible!). Here a few things to look out for. More >>

MAX'S Cycle Training. MAX'S Cycle Training is based around an intermediate level trainer, training using a 4 day per week split training routine. If you have reached a bit of a plateau­ in your progress, cycle training is a great way to shock your body into new gains. This training program follows the basic program outlined here. More >>

A six pack in time for summer. With the return of warm weather in the spring, thoughts can never be too far behind of the approaching summer and the many wonderful outdoor activities that we'll often associate with it and among our top favorite summertime activities will always be the trip to the beach. More >>

Aging and your body. Most people think that gaining weight and getting older go hand in hand. Recent studies tell us that's just not true. That means, unfortunately, the jig is up and you now have no excuse for being overweight. More >>

Avoid injuries and keep growing. If you've been working out for a few years or talked to a few of the regulars at your gym, you'll soon discover nearly everyone, it seems, is nursing some kind of injury. Sometimes it's a recent pull or strain and sometimes it's a 'bad knee' or 'bad shoulder' from an injury many years ago. More >>

10 Common Training Mistakes. Unbalanced strength-training programs. Most people tend to focus on certain muscles, such as the abdominals or biceps, because they have a greater impact on appearance or it is where they feel strongest. More >>

Pain Management. The main causes of pain include medical conditions, (such as cancer, arthritis and back problems), injuries and surgery. Sometimes, the cause of the pain can't be found or there are no available treatments for it. More >>

Tracking Your Fitness level. Mind Your Belt Buckle & Skip the Scale: In this high-tech world we live in, we sometimes forget the simple ways to do things. If you've already started a workout program and can't seem to see results. More >>

Heavy Duty Training. Heavy Duty is a phrase that former Mr. Universe Mike Mentzer coined for High Intensity Training (also known as 'HIT'). HIT is based on doing very intense, brief, and infrequent workouts. The goal is progressive overload. More >>

Training for Hard Gainers. A hard gainer is a genetically-typical type of person. To be more specific he/she is born with no special genetic 'gifts' which enable them to pack on muscle mass quickly. Such people cannot gain lots of strength using VOLUME training. More >>

You look good, but are you healthy? After months or even years of zealous training, you have a body you can be proud of. Good muscle size, lower body fat - you're looking good! But are you really healthy? More >>

DOMS - Understand it and Grow. So what exactly is DOMS? Well the truth is that even though scientists have been studying it for over 100 years, we are not exactly sure of the actual physiological process that causes those aches and pains. More >>

10 Commandments of Bodybuilding. This single biggest mistake I see amongst trainers who are trying to add size is not eating enough. It's impossible to build muscle if your diet lacks proper nutrients. More >>

Adding Size. Ask any serious trainer in any gym if they would like to add more size, and I guarantee 98% will say yes. The other 2% are lying. If you're just starting out on the weights it's usually relatively easy to add a reasonable amount of muscle. More >>

Training Techniques to Keep Growing Naturally. I remember a few years ago, Aaron Baker, one of the IFBB pros, was in Australia for some guest appearances. He absolutely dwarfed (in terms of muscle mass) most of our top Australian Champions who were competing that day. More >>

Natural Growth Hormone / Insulin Metabolism for Muscle Growth. Without growth hormone pumping all twenty amino acids into muscle, you don't get a very good clearance of amino acids from the blood into muscle. But you still get some. There are five separate amino acid transport systems to move amino acids into all cells in the body. More >>

Training and your joints. With many young trainers, the temptation is to train often, long and hard, with very little warm up before hitting the heavy weights, and with virtually no stretching or cool down. This is a recipe for damaging your joints. Joint damage doesn't happen in a few weeks or even a few months. More >>

Fitness for Seniors. In the same way that taking a once-a-day vitamin is beneficial, lifting weights and other kinds of strength training provide multiple benefits, according to the findings of many studies over the past several years. Here are the 10 top reasons to get started on a resistance strength-training program:. More >>